By Tim Clifford

Last Black Friday, Nov. 28, 2014 at 12:45 p.m. Cees Berlage was running drills and sprints for the Seattle Christian basketball team when he fell over unconscious. The 16-year-old had gone into sudden cardiac arrest.

“He was unresponsive and his eyes were really big, so I ran and got the other coaches, said “call 911” and started CPR,” described coach Braque Hildreth.
He had no pulse and was no longer breathing.

At first the coaching staff believed that Cees was having a seizure of some sort, possibly epileptic. They had no way of knowing the true cause of his collapse lay in a heart prolapse defect, a coronary anomaly, which had gone undiscovered in Cees even during physicals at doctor’s offices and with cardiologists.

For assistant coach Patrick Donovan, a marine who had returned to the area in October and begun coaching in November, his prior experience clued him in as to what was actually happening.

“I know from training and then seeing it live a few times as well,” he explained.

Head coach Shaun Deyager and coach Micheal Watts rushed in as well to assist with CPR and a portable defibrillator, or AED (Automated External Defibrillator), was grabbed and started up as well. With clear printed instructions inside as well as voice commands from the machine the coaches attached the electrodes to Cees and allowed the machine to do its work.

“At first it said “shock not advised”, there was still a minute heartbeat going on, and then he completely flat-lined and it shocked him,” described Donovan. After this shock Cees came back enough for the coaches to continue rescue breaths.

All four coaches knew that they were working within a timeframe of seconds, not minutes. The Fire Department reached the school and got to Cees exactly four minutes and six seconds after being called.

Without a heartbeat there is no breathing and without air the brain begins to take on neurological damage after four minutes.

After five days in Seattle Children’s Hospital Cees walked out without any permanent brain damage and months later has been told that he could play basketball, or any sport for that matter, again next year. On Mar. 9 Cees will have a defibrillator surgically implanted.

At the last SeaTac City Council meeting on Feb. 24 the four coaches were each presented with a plaque in recognition of their heroic CPR save by the Kent Fire Department. The council chambers were filled with family and friends of the coaches and Cees beaming with pride and gratitude.

“King County has one of the highest survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the world. When I first started it was at about 4% and through a series of incremental changes we’ve brought it up to over 60%. That is just an amazing accomplishment to have seen during my career,” said Deputy Chief Brian Wiwel at the meeting.

Describing this system as a “links to life” network he explained to the councilmembers the importance of AED technology and its accessibility as well as the need for citizen involvement in CPR situations. Without the quick thinking and actions of these four coaches it is very likely that Cees would not be in as good of condition as he is today.

“We were there quickly, but they were there quicker,” said Wiwel of the coaches.

Seattle Christian School, located on Military Road, was one of the first schools to be supplied with an AED years ago. The fire department is hopeful that news of this save and others like it will make AED’s a requirement in all schools and public places.

“He went down and the only reason that he survived was that there was an AED available and they knew to use it,” said Hake Berlage, Cees’s mother and a nurse by profession.

“Basically my thing is that the reason he survived is because there was that AED and that needs to be more readily available throughout. Since this happened to my son we have had lots of people tell us how they lost a child in that age group from doing some sport, or whatever, and an AED wasn’t available,” she explained.

According to Hake everyone should expect to see Cees playing on the court next season.